North Korea warns of more gift packages for US

Unidentified Korean People’s Army (KPA) rockets are displayed during a military parade marking the 105th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, in Pyongyang on April 15, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Ed JONES / AFP PHOTO / ED JONES

Amid the international uproar over North Korea’s latest and biggest nuclear weapons test, one of its top diplomats said on Tuesday his country was ready to send “more gift packages’’ to the U.S.

Han Song, North Korea ambassador to the UN, made the announcement in Geneva in his address at the UN-sponsored conference on Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test explosion.

“I am proud of saying that just two days ago on Sept. 3, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea successfully carried out hydrogen bomb test for an intercontinental ballistic rocket.

The test was carried out under our plan for building a strategic nuclear force,” Han told the Geneva forum.

He added, “the recent self-defence measures by DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the U.S.

“The U.S. will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as it relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK.”

The diplomat said that military measures being taken by North Korea were “an exercise of restraint and justified self-defence right.”

He added that they were intended to counter “the ever-growing and decade-long U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy aimed at isolating my country’’.

“Pressure or sanctions will never work on my country,” Han declared, adding, “DPRK will never under any circumstances put its nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table.”

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said that North Korea had defied the international community once again with its test.

“We look forward to working with our partners in the Security Council with regard to a new resolution that will put some of the strongest sanctions possible on the DPRK.

“Advances in the regime are nuclear and missile programme are a threat to us all.

“Now is the time to say tests, threats and destabilising actions will no longer be tolerated.

“It can no longer be business as usual with this regime,’’ Wood told a news conference.

On Monday, the White House said President Donald Trump had agreed “in principle” to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of the North’s latest test.

The U.S. accused North Korea’s trading partners of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was “begging for war.”

NAN